Title

Authors

Josh W. Poorman '13, Gettysburg College

Document Type

Student Research Paper

Date of Creation

Fall 2012

Department

Art; Interdisciplinary Studies

Abstract

This paper situates Dutch mapmaker Willem Blaeu’s Asia noviter delineata—part of the Stuckenberg Map Collection in the Gettysburg College Special Collections—within the larger framework of Renaissance thought and a shifting colonial balance of power. The map’s pictorial marginalia expresses a Dutch quest for empirical knowledge that echoed contemporary cabinets of curiosities throughout early modern Europe. Similar to these cabinets, Blaeu’s map can be seen as a cartographic teatro mundi, used to propagate Dutch hegemony through both a robust naval presence and an expanding geographic and natural knowledge of the world.

Comments

This paper was written for ARTH/IDS 284: Wonders of Nature and Artifice: The Renaissance Quest for Knowledge, Fall 2012.

Copyright Note

This is the author's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.